Do you ever read anything so ridiculous and ludicrous that you have to read it a second time just to make sure you read it correctly? I mean, even pro-choice people have to be embarrassed by this spectacle!
A columnist named Moira Weigel wrote a piece for The Atlantic originally entitled “How the Ultrasound Pushed the Idea That A Fetus Is a Person.” Because ultrasounds have an agenda to force onto everyone, don’cha know?
Party of Science™ pic.twitter.com/UyrJJQ8b0S
— neontaster (@neontaster) January 24, 2017
After some pushback from people with more than two brain cells to rub together, the column has now been retitled to “How The Ultrasound Became Political.” Which is SO MUCH BETTER, lemma tell ya.
Moira’s beef is with controversial “Heartbeat Bills,” which would make abortion illegal after a heartbeat is detected, because a heartbeat is evidence that a living thing is present. Now, I think such bills are a great idea because I think abortion is the highest level of evil that our society has allowed in the past 40+ years. But society would rather take advice from women who think that prancing around DC in fuzzy pink vagina costumes is a form of civil political discourse, so I’m going to be shut down from the start.
Opponents of the heartbeat bills have pointed out that they would eliminate abortion rights almost entirely—making the procedure illegal around four weeks after fertilization, before many women realize that they are pregnant. These measures raise even more elementary questions: What is a fetal heartbeat? And why does it matter?
The idea would have been unthinkable before the advent of a technology developed in 1976: real-time ultrasound. At six weeks, the “heartbeat” is not audible; it is visible, a flickering that takes place between 120 and 160 times per minute on a black-and-white playback screen. As cardiac cells develop, they begin to send electrical pulses that cause their neighbors to contract. Scientists can observe the same effect if they culture cells in a petri dish.
Why does a heartbeat matter? You can just see the same thing in a petri dish, so what’s the big deal?
Oh, I dunno – the fact that unborn children have become synonymous with “inconvenience,” thanks to feminist ghouls who think that any woman who chooses to be a mother is shackling herself to some bizarre patriarchy-induced slavery. That women who look upon motherhood in a positive light are traitors to our gender, and therefore not actually considered “women” by the identity courts of progressive feminism. That women who don’t decide to have an abortion are somehow missing out on the great and glorious advancements of women’s rights – by denying those same rights to the children (a good number of which are quite likely to be female) who are being killed in the name of women’s liberation.
Progressive feminism is really horrifying if you think about it long enough. Not to mention anti-science (funny how that term never comes up when you’re talking about abortion).
One of the mental gymnastics Moira uses in her crusade against those EEEEEEEEEVIL ultrasounds is that ultrasound technology was developed during a time of war. You know – sonar that looked for enemy submarines and minefields. Because NOTHING the military comes up with could EVER have applications for civilian life –
The origins of fetal ultrasound lie in stealth warfare. Ultrasound technology was first developed to scan vast spaces, rather than telescope in on infinitesimal cell masses. In the 1880s, the French scientists Pierre and Jacques Curie discovered that they could produce sound waves with frequencies of millions of cycles per second by applying electricity to quartz crystals. Following the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, several scientists and mathematicians experimented with these “ultrasound” signals to determine the presence of icebergs underwater.
However, the real push came during World War I, when German submarines blockaded the Atlantic. The French, British, and American navies rushed to develop devices that could surveil U-Boats. The first known sinking of a submarine detected by hydrophone took place in the Atlantic in April 1916. During World War II, the Allied forces continued to dump resources into improving sonar capabilities.After the war, army trained scientists and army funded laboratories demobilized the technology, turning away from the ocean, toward women’s bodies. In the early 1960s, doctors in Europe, Japan, and in the United States simultaneously developed and promoted the widespread use of ultrasound in clinical settings. The First International Conference on Diagnostic Ultrasound took place in Pittsburgh in 1965. That same year, fetal images began to spread across popular culture.
See that? Ultrasounds came from a time of war and now they’re being used to wage war against women who should want to kill their babies! Ultrasounds are EEEEEEEEEVIL
Leftist logic is the absolute worst, you guys.
Oh, and according to Moira – it’s really BAD that mothers-to-be consider that first sonogram photo to be their baby’s first picture. How DARE these moms think of their babies as, well, their babies! How DARE these moms post those pictures to Facebook and Instagram and say that they’re excited to meet their little ones!
Charmaine Yoest, the former president of Americans United for Life, credited ultrasound with the drop. “There’s an entire generation of women who saw a sonogram as their first baby picture,” Yoest told the Associated Press. “There’s an increased awareness of the humanity of the baby before it is born.” But there is no evidence that pregnant women react to ultrasound images in the way that Yoest suggested.
Because real women hate their own children. Enough to want to kill them in utero. It’s a RIGHT of all women! Even the stupid pro-life ones who don’t think killing anybody is a good thing! At least, that’s what the Women’s Marchers over the weekend told me. And, you know, I’m just a silly conservative woman who’s really a puppet of the patriarchy and I can’t POSSIBLY think for myself without my benevolent feminist overlords dictating my opinions and actions!
I mean this with every atom in my body and soul when I say: Feminists can pound sand.
Okay, Moira – let’s have a little chat. I wasn’t going to bring this up quite yet, but seeing as I went through this less than a month ago, I’m guessing my experience is a bit more valid than your idiotic pro-baby-killing conspiracy theories
Right now as I’m writing this, I am 12 weeks pregnant. I had my first ultrasound at the beginning of January. It was an incredible moment. The second the doctor put the ultrasound probe onto my belly, there was undoubtedly a baby there. Head, body, even little arms with hand-nubs. While Tiny isn’t fully developed yet, even at that early stage – my baby looked like a human being.
Oh – and the heartbeat. Yep. That was there too. Quick as a hummingbird’s, which the doctor said is healthy. And the funny thing about this whole experience was that while the doctor was talking to us (because my husband was there too), he was cracking jokes and I laughed at them. My own laughs showed up on the ultrasound screen – so… so much for the heartbeat just being a byproduct of the ultrasound machine noise.
(I was actually kind of sad when the ultrasound was over and the machine was turned off. I wanted to look MORE at my baby. It was just so cool to see those images and think that’s my son or daughter in there. It’s also nice to remind myself that I haven’t been going through morning sickness for nothing. But that’s just a side note, really.)
And if Moira is looking for evidence that moms-to-be think of that first sonogram picture as Baby’s First Photo – I’ve got Tiny’s sonogram picture hanging up on the fridge, only because I don’t have a baby book yet. But once I do, it’s going in there as “Baby’s First Photo.” Because that’s EXACTLY what it is!
This entire crusade for abortion is simply to make women think of their own children as the enemy. That this small creature that you CHOSE to create (which is what you’re doing when you have sex, like it or not) is somehow responsible for your actions and must be gotten rid of. The only reason that abortion is accepted as much as it is in society is because feminism has created this narrative that no woman wants to be pregnant or even a mother. So we have to give them a way to get rid of that rotten little parasite that they allowed to become implanted in their wombs!
More than anything other lie that feminism has pushed, that is the most insulting and degrading that I can think of. If I knew nothing else about modern feminism, the outright war the movement has waged against motherhood and family life would be enough for me to never want to be associated with ANYTHING connected with it. I felt that way before I became a mother, and I feel that way even more now that I am expecting a baby.
Feminists can peddle their family-hating garbage somewhere else. Or they can finally quit. Would certainly make for a much more peaceful Facebook feed.